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Crab on Toast

Crab meat served on toast with a peppery cream sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Meat and crab work together. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 448 recipes. Both carry 2,3,5-trimethylpyrazine, which smells cocoa, roasted. The science ↓

Crab on Toast

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Season crab meat with pepper and coarse sea salt.

  2. Chop green peppers and young onions finely.

Make the sauce

  1. Melt butter in a pan rubbed with garlic.

  2. Add chopped peppers and onions, and a dash of cayenne; cook together.

  3. Stir flour into cream, then add to the pan and bring to a boil.

Finish and serve

  1. Add crab meat, mix well, and serve hot on toast.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Meat + crabtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together448 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3,5-trimethylpyrazine (cocoa, roasted).

  2. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Crab + creamtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together317 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetoin (butter, cream).

  4. Crab + buttertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together812 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  5. Pepper + oniontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Crab meat
Provides the main protein and flavor of the dish.
Butter
Adds richness and carries flavor when melted in the pan.
Flour
Thickens the cream into a smooth sauce as it heats.
Cream
Forms the body of the sauce and adds moisture and richness.
Green peppers
Add fresh, slightly bitter vegetable flavor and texture to the sauce.
Young onions
Add mild savory sweetness and aroma to the sauce.

The step that matters

Stirring flour into the cream before boiling. Flour clumps if it hits hot liquid unmixed. Whisking it smoothly into cold cream first lets the starch disperse, so the sauce thickens evenly when it comes to a boil.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (meat, crab, pepper, butter, cream, flour):

  1. Potatofits about as well
  2. Spinachfits about as well
  3. Okrafits about as well
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, crab, pepper, butter, cream, flour. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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